JAMES WOOLSEY: OBAMA ADMINISTRATION NOT ‘CALLING IT STRAIGHT’ ON TERRORISM

Washington Times on June 29, 2016, reported that former CIA Director James Woolsey criticized the Obama administration’s reluctance to assess the scope of the threat of radical Islamic terrorism in straightforward terms. Excerpts below:

“The administration has a narrative, and they follow the narrative, and if something doesn’t fit with the narrative, they fiddle around with it until it looks like it fits with the narrative,” Mr. Woolsey said on WMAL radio’s “Mornings on the Mall,” while discussing the June 28 terrorist attack on an airport in Istanbul.

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Mr. Woolsey’s remarks came after WMAL co-host Brian Wilson asked him to react to a soundbite from CIA Director John Brennan’s recent congressional testimony, wherein Mr. Brennan warned that “our efforts have not reduced [ISIS’s] terrorism capability and global reach, and the group would have to suffer even heavier losses on territory, manpower and money for its terrorist capacity to decline significantly.”

“I think he was calling it straight, and the administration is not,” Mr. Woolsey said. “It’s good that he and other leaders, some of our military leaders, have been, I think, even more explicit. And they’re right. We cannot prevail just by doing what the Obama administration has been doing. And the Obama administration is causing a big problem by not talking clearly about what we are doing.”

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Comment: The Obama administration’s handling of the terrorist threat to the United States is coming under severe criticism. The terrorist attacks continue and at the same time the Democratic leadership declares that Middle Eastern terrorist organization are almost defeated. The situation in Europe is similar. The number of terrorist attacks is growing. The June 28 attack on the Istanbul Atatuerk Airport occurred in an strategically important NATO country. Firmer measures are needed both from the United States and from European countries.

Meanwhile Secretary of State John Kerry faced swift criticism on June 29 for suggesting the terror attack at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport was evidence the Islamic State is getting “desperate” – an assessment one top Republican official said “defies reality.”

They’ve said they’re on the run for many years, and they’re not,” McCaul told Fox News. “I think the airstrikes have ramped up external operations … This is an unprecedented pace of terror in modern times. And so to say they’re on the run … absolutely defies reality.”